RICHMOND, Va.—A highly motivated Matt Kenseth won the pole Friday for the Sprint Cup Series race Saturday at Richmond International Raceway.

With his team fighting for respect after its pole-winning and race-winning engine from Kansas Speedway last week failed inspection, Kenseth turned a lap of 130.334 mph in qualifying Friday and will lead the Toyota Owners 400 field to green on the 0.75-mile track.

He will be joined on the front row by Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Brian Vickers (130.303 mph).

Kenseth won just his 10th pole in a 14-year career that has included 480 career starts prior to this weekend.

“When you only win nine poles in 14 years, you’re pretty darn fired up for all of them,” Kenseth said. “It was one of our goals this weekend was to come here and sit on the pole and quiet down at least part of the noise.”

That noise was from Wednesday, when NASCAR issued harsh penalties for the engine, which had a connecting rod 2.7 grams below the 525-gram minimum.

Kenseth was docked 50 points by NASCAR and his crew chief Jason Ratcliff was fined $200,000.

Pending appeal, Ratcliff faces a suspension for six points races plus the team could have its owners points frozen for six races, which could mean millions of dollars in bonus money at the end of the season.

Then on Friday, he set the top speed at a track where he has never started better than seventh and has just one top-10 start since 2007. Winning the pole earns Kenseth a berth in the preseason Sprint Unlimited. His pole last week is still credited to his career total but NASCAR ruled because of the engine issue, he couldn’t use it to get into the Sprint Unlimited.

So was his team more motivated?

“They’re motivated every week,” Kenseth said. “You don’t really know what everybody is feeling and thinking inside. I think everybody was pretty excited we won the pole, especially Jason and Coach (Gibbs).

“When things like this happen and you don’t feel like it’s just, you kind of take it upon yourself as a team to just push a little bit harder, just do a little bit more,” Gordon said.

“Sometimes you don’t know that you have that in you. But it’s amazing how in that moment you can find a little bit more. … Sometimes it tears you apart and tears you down and sometimes it lifts you up and make you stronger and makes you fight harder.”

Dale Earnhardt Jr. will start 19th; Danica Patrick will start 30th.

Only 43 drivers entered the race, so all made the field for the Saturday night race (7 p.m. ET, Fox).

“Matt and his team are a rock-solid team,” Gordon said. “They’ve shown it this whole year. Whatever happened this past weekend is not going to affect how those guys perform going forward.”